December 2025 saw the decision of Cusworth J being handed down in the case of LP v MP [2025] EWFC 473, a case which centred around a wife’s conduct during the marriage. The husband’s pleaded transgressions against the wife were plentiful and can be summarised as follows:
- Lying to the husband early on in their relationship and causing him to believe that she was on a fast track to become a High Court judge, and by so doing, induced into to marrying her in haste. The husband alleged therefore that the marriage was founded on deception and fraud and continued in this way for much of its duration
- Causing the husband to fund her alleged attempts to pursue her employment. This related to trips and studies which the wife had informed her as part of her employment as a High Court judge
- Causing the husband to pay for the cost of her criminal defence relating to offences of fraud as well as compensation for the victim of the fraud
- Coercive controlling behaviour which featured frequent financial demands of him
- Physical abuse and threats to kill
- Making very serious, but ultimately false, allegations of the husband within Children Act proceedings and to third parties.
Unusually in a case involving coercive controlling behaviour, the husband was a man of considerable wealth by the time the parties’ relationship commenced. Although retired before the start of their relationship, the husband had previously had a very successful career in the city. Further, at the date of the trial, the husband had access to greater resources than the wife.
The court accepted the factual basis upon which the husband relied, rejecting the wife’s belated attempts to say that she was in fact the victim of coercive controlling behaviour. However, the court did not agree that every element of the proven factual matters would necessarily result in assets being re-distributed.
The husband in this case had sensibly avoided suggestion that this was an add back case, in light of the requirement for deliberate and wanton dissipation and earlier decision that “a spouse must take his or her partner as he or she finds them”; MAP v MFP [2015] EWHC 627 (Fam).
The court reminded itself that
- where there is gross and obvious personal conducted meted out by one party against the other, such conduct would only be reflected where there is a financial consequence to its impact,
- misconduct envisaged by s25(2(g) must necessarily be quantifiable in monetary terms: Goddard-Watts v Goddard-Watts [2023] EWCA Civ 115,
- There must be a causative link between conduct and the financial consequence
With that in mind the court found that where a party has been responsible for coercive controlling behaviour, especially when that behaviour includes a significant element of violence, the negative financial impact may well not be easily measurable and any loss will only usually be capable of a very broad evaluation at best. Cusworth J considered that
“there is a real risk of unfairness to victims of violent or coercive controlling behaviour, if the lack of readily quantifiable financial loss prevents the courts from even considering the fairness of taking their assailant’s behaviour into account in determining the outcome of a financial remedy application. Such behaviour may well have hard-to-predict but potentially far-reaching consequences, in some cases for the victim’s prospects of achieving self-sufficiency, in others for a fair financial outcome in all of the circumstances. That does not mean that the fact of such behaviour will inevitably lead to a different award, but in the right case, it clearly should do.”
Taking all factors into account the learned Judge awarded the wife less than the full 50% share of the assets.
NB: Part of the court’s rationale was predicated upon the fact that the wife had made no financial contribution towards the acquisition of 2 properties, which the court had found were matrimonial assets. The wife attended the hearing as a Litigant in Person, and query if the outcome may have been different if more robust representations in respect of unequal contributions to matrimonial assets after a marriage of this duration may have elicited a different outcome.
https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/efc/2025/473
Dominique Gillan is an experienced family practitioner and features in the Legal 500 for both children and financial work.
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